One of the main contributors of CO 2 emissions are the homes we live in. In the EU, buildings are responsible for 36% of CO 2 emissions and 40% of energy consumption.

Getting clean energy through your own turbine without relying on a central grid sounds great, but with subsidies being cut across Europe, is it too good to be true? Those with plenty of experience with wind turbines are quick to concede the financial challenges of this green technology.

Across Europe, town and city councils are becoming increasingly interested in energy decentralisation , i.e. in producing power closer to where it is consumed.

There are three ways a crowdfunding project can be financed. Lending: the entrepreneurs borrow money and pay interest; equity: investors in the project become its shareholders; donations: no reward is to be expected (there is a fourth way, a mix of equity and lending called “hybrid”).

Traditionally our electricity grids were designed to move power from large nuclear and fossil fuel power plants to consumers, but renewable energy will see changes to allow smaller power generation from wind and solar to be hooked up to the grid.

The European grid already faces transmission challenges, as the alternative current (AC) infrastructure has almost reached its transport capacity.

Making a city or district energy smart is, first and foremost, an exercise in good planning . However, such green planning tools are still in their infancy. The trouble is that every city is different, every district unique.

Nordic countries have achieved a great independence from fossils because of their widespread district heating systems. District heating is a smart way to avoid using fossil fuels to heat buildings .

Cities have started to join forces to become more energy efficient . This trends stems from the findings of the first climate assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 1990, which was quite alarming.

A well-accepted measure for climate protection involves reducing greenhouse gas emissions . And buildings have the greatest energy saving potential, according to the official EU Energy Efficiency Plan 2011 .

Householders do not always know how much energy they consume. To help improve their awareness, the EnergyLife app was developed through BeAware , a EU funded project, led by the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT), in Finland.

Liberalising the heat market is, in theory, possible. It would operate in the same way that enables owners of domestic-scale wind turbines, or any other electricity producer, to sell surplus into the grid and draw power from the network.

Professor Claes-Göran Granqvist and colleagues at Uppsala University in Sweden have recently received about 2 million euros from the European Research Council to develop new materials making buildings more energy efficient.

Competitive solar cells rely on climate, efficiency, material and production costs. The fluctuation of electricity prices from different sources and political climates both play a big part as well.

In the district of Hol, located west of Oslo, a church built in 1920 was renovated to become energy efficient for as little cost as possible, while respecting its status as a historical monument.

Certain European cities are a step ahead when it comes to preserving the environment. For instance, thanks to innovative techniques and a more ecological way of life, the commune of Växjö, Sweden, could be on its way to becoming the first fossil fuel free city in the world.

“Wood may be present in people’s life more than we think”, says Mariana Hassegawa, a researcher at the European Forest Institute . She is one of the authors of a case study on new wood-based products by the BioMonitor EU project.

María Regidor co-owns a mini-hydro power plant in Spain, which produces part of the electricity provided to the residents of the Castile and León region.

The success of lithium-ion batteries is so great that it’s easy to ignore how common they now are – except on the rare occasion one bursts into flames. That success arguably originated with M.

Buildings and the construction sector are responsible for over one-third of global final energy consumption and nearly 40% of total direct and indirect CO 2 emissions .